Investigating the role of source and source trust in prebunks and debunks of misinformation in online experiments across four EU countries.

ABSTRACT: Misinformation surrounding crises poses a significant challenge for public institutions. Understanding the relative effectiveness of different types of interventions to counter misinformation, and which segments of the population are most and least receptive to them, is crucial. We conducted a preregistered online experiment involving 5228 participants from Germany, Greece, Ireland, and Poland. Participants were exposed to misinformation on climate change or COVID-19. In addition, they were pre-emptively exposed to a prebunk, warning them of commonly used misleading strategies, before encountering the misinformation, or were exposed to a debunking intervention afterwards. The source of the intervention (i.e. the European Commission) was either revealed or not. The findings show that both i

SUBMITTER: Bruns H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11377563 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature